Let's do It Right This Time

by Lorde Shadowz

Harry is furious. You'd think that without Voldemort, he'd have the right to a little peace. But with Umbitch acting up, Ginny in therapy, Hermione a traitor, and James Potter not so dead after all, he decides to take a chance on a little-used spell...and takes the world by storm. Harry is dead, long live Aurelius Gaunt!

2. Chapter 1

Let's do It Right This Time, Chapter 1: 10,000 Spells You Should Never Use

"Headmistress?"

Minerva Mcgonagall glanced up through her spectacles, setting down her quill so that it wouldn't drop. "Yes Harry? Please make it quick, I have a meeting with the Governers."

"Um, do you think Madame Pince would mind if I used the 'gemino' charm on a few pages in 10,000 Spells You Should Never Use? I'm doing a paper."

Mcgonagall looked at him suspiciously a moment, but finally nodded. He swallowed. He hated lying to her, but he couldn't exactly say why he really wanted it. Some of the spells in that book were the darkest of the dark, which was why it was in the Restricted Section in the first place. Others were obsolete: conjuring chamber pots, translating Greek to Helvetian, or absurd: causing a thousand day-glow parrots to spell "Marry me, (name)" in the sky, causing someone to talk in bad Spencerian sonnets for a week, or making everything one ate taste like chestnuts. That last curse would have been nice to use on Umbridge, especially as it was permanent, but unfortunately you had to cast it on yourself.

By the time Harry had gotten to the library, it was nearing curfew, and Madame Pince was already shooing out a bevy of Ravenclaws. She was about to chase out Harry, too, when she realized who he was, and stepped aside, lips pursed as if she had been sucking on a lemon drop without sugar.

"Ten minutes, Mr. Potter, that's all," she said, as if he was still a disruptive little Gryffindor. Harry didn't mind. He walked straight to the Restricted Section, the ward line only buzzing, as he was of age, and scanned rows and rows of nasty-looking Dark Arts books until he found the one he wanted, wedged between two obviously contraband Playwizards, and pulled out the musty-smelling book.

He cast a glance over his shoulder. Madame Pince was checking out a lone Slytherin, and had her back to him, writing something in her great record book. Harry seized his chance. A twitch of his wand, a mutter of gemino, and two identical books lay at his feet: he had duplicated it. He smirked. Normally, copyright charms prevented what he had just done, but those had long been disabled on the books at the Hogwarts library so that students could copy pages for study or homework- he had just not expected it to work on an entire book.

Still, that made it easier, as he hadn't had to look through the whole thing for the page on Facere Vita Iterum before Madame Pince came over.

With another flick of his wand, he banished the copy to his flat. When Madame Pince came to kick him out a few minutes later, he was sitting in an overstuffed Gryffindor red armchair in a little nook, innocently perusing the latest fiction speculating about his early life- something about having a pet griffin at age six, and living in Potter Castle with doting and clueless muggle relatives, who has strange, overly elaborate contraptions even just to squeeze an orange or flush a toilet.

Harry put down the book of drivel without being put out in the slightest, only grumbling a little for old-time's sake, and added 'suing Wizarding publishers for making money on an orphan' to his bucket list for things he meant to change, on the way out of Hogwarts. Hmm, maybe befriending Rita Skeeter could be useful, too. He had no doubt that for the right price and the promise of headlines she could have made Voldemort's rebirth sound like the second coming of Merlin.

The first time around, he'd been shy, he'd been clueless, he'd been noble, he'd been Gryffindor. He still tried to cling to his nobility, but he was certainly not shy or clueless. And this time around, he'd take the world by storm.

10,000 Spells You Should Never Use was even more interesting reading than he'd remembered. There was a spell to make moss grow on someone's skin (muscosus), a spell to make any hair style someone was currently wearing into a mullet (Harry wondered idly if it could grow one on a bald man), a spell to make a caricature of your rival on any blank piece of parchment he or she touched (Harry would have to remember vultum detorqueo- he couldn't wait to use it on James), and one to make one's rival's silverware bite them (Harry shuddered at the thought of what the twins might do if they got a hold of that one).

At last, on page 7345, he found it. Facere Vita Iterum. It was complicated, expensive, and of the sort that the Ministry of Magic would probably consider dark with a capital 'D'. Fortunately, however, the ritual did not include either human sacrifice or torture, and the accompanying potion had no human organs on the ingredient list. The fact that the lines of the ritual circle and the accompanying runes had to be drawn in one's own blood was mildly disturbing, but Harry could spare a pint of his blood if it meant he got to fix the train wreck that was his life. Most of the other ingredients and artifacts could be bought at the local apothecary shop, and the illegal ones he could get from his contacts in Knock Turn Alley. As for the gallon of basilisk venom, dispite Ron and Hermione's raid on Salazar's Chamber when they were all seventeen, they couldn't have punctured both venom sacks, and in the controlled environment of the Chamber, the toxic carcass could last centuries without decomposing; not many things can eat basilisk. He was very luck he had his own personal source, too, as the venom went for 180,050 G an ounce, and more on the Black market.